


Rituals of Love

by Kat2107



Category: The Old Guard (Movie 2020)
Genre: Baklava, Christmas, Eid ul-Fitr, Fluff, Found Family, M/M, They're just a little different, every family has traditions
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-27
Updated: 2020-07-27
Packaged: 2021-03-06 07:15:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,761
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25549564
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kat2107/pseuds/Kat2107
Summary: Sometimes Nile wants to hit them. It's unbelievable how many quirks people collect past a certain age. And then there are the insiders, the things they do and never bother to explain because for the past 200 years everybody around them was in the know.Nile doesn't understand at first why Nicky needs to buy gifts in June.
Relationships: Andy | Andromache the Scythian & Nile Freeman & Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani & Nicky | Nicolo di Genova, Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani/Nicky | Nicolò di Genova, Nile Freeman & Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani, Nile Freeman & Nicky | Nicolo di Genova
Comments: 159
Kudos: 1373





	Rituals of Love

“Where are we going?” Nile asks and takes two quick steps to catch up with Nicky’s long strides. He marches through the old German town with a goal in mind and places to be. 

“Shopping,” he says. 

“Shopping? Weren’t you and Joe doing that yesterday already?”

“Not that kind of shopping.” His eyes glint in the late afternoon sun. “We’re getting presents.”

“Wait, presents? Did I miss a birthday? For who?” 

"No. Not a birthday. It's more a general celebration." 

Sometimes Nile wants to hit them. It's unbelievable how many quirks people collect past a certain age. And then there are the insiders, the things they do and never bother to explain because for the past 200 years everybody around them was in the know. She's getting good at guessing and googling. It’s early June, too early for Pentecost and too late for Christ Ascension. Which leaves something personal. 

She’s trying to come up with something, letting her eyes wander over the very normal people around them as she thinks. It’s habit. Her gaze catches on a pair of giddy girls, both wearing a hijab and it dawns on her. There is a holiday. She would need to check the date, but if she counts backward, a year ago and she is still in Afghanistan and takes off about ten days- “It’s Eid?” 

She swivels around in time to catch the small, proud smile in his eyes. 

“Yes. Tomorrow,” he says with a sheepish smile. “It’s a tradition we have. Sometimes the days fly so fast that you lose time or you see things that no man should. Taking a few weeks to fast is a good way to come back to yourself.”

Intellectually, she knows that it was time for Ramadan. She knows that Joe is Muslim. Or was. Like Nicky, he wears it close to his heart in a way that makes it hard to pinpoint. Nile even noticed the change in their patterns but Andy had brushed it off; not as unimportant but as one of those inevitable quirks that people developed after a thousand years. _They do that sometimes._ Obviously. Thanks, Andy. 

The realization opens a whole can of worms that she hadn’t considered up to that point.

“You didn’t fast during Lent, did you?” _Did I miss that, too?_

“I didn’t. I haven’t fasted before Easter since…” Walking slower now to fit her pace and their conversation, Nicky takes a moment to think. “Before Constantinople fell. We stayed in Damascus for a while until Andy and Quynh found us. It was easy to keep up there. Then we went far west into the Maghrib and south into Africa. You don’t lose the act, just..." He laughs softly as he guides her into a narrow alley between medieval houses for some privacy. "At that time Ramadan and Lent almost synced in spring. We started fasting together and never stopped."

“That seems to be a pattern with you two.”

Nicky's eyes twinkle with mirth, even as his mouth twists into an apologetic frown. 

“Yes. It also stopped me from imposing my absolutely miserable self on him and the others for six weeks a year.”

“That bad?” It’s hard to imagine him, easy going and open and just so nice, as imposing himself on anybody. But it’s also hard to imagine him cleaving people in half with his longsword or the ice-cold killer he is behind the scope of his rifle.

“I was a priest before I joined the crusade. Lent was serious business. It was meant to make you absolutely miserable.”

That part is new, but she isn't surprised. It’s in his very core, the way he carries himself, how he treats civilians. How he spoke for Booker. How he can’t help himself but take care of people. 

But he said he _was_ and it sparks a little flash of hurt inside her. “Do you still believe in God?” she asks. 

The little cross hangs around her neck for all the world to see. His eyes dip to it. 

“Do I believe in God, the Father almighty, and in Jesus Christ, his only son, our Lord?” His smile fades only to return full force a second later. “There are days when I do. When I go to mass and pray and it is the same overwhelming knowledge of truth. I sit vigil in prayer on Easter night and it's right there. I _know._ Then there are days, there have been years and decades where I couldn’t bring myself to so much as utter a Pater Noster.”

“But?” Because there is a but. It’s in his eyes, in the softness of his smile. 

“But I don’t need to believe in the existence of God to believe in what it means, to believe what Jesus said to be true and to follow it. They say to be Christian is to believe in God. I disagree. I have met hundreds, thousands who wouldn’t even meet the basic requirements before Christ. I have been one of them and I found, claiming God’s forgiveness is an easy way out if I can’t forgive myself. To me, to be Christian is to act in Christ. Whether or not you believe that it will earn you the afterlife is beside the point." 

Her fingers reach for the cross around her neck and his words rattle around her head. Knowing that God was there has been the rock of much of her life, no matter what she went through that he was walking by her side. Footsteps in the sand and all that. It suddenly felt childish compared to this actual soldier of Christ thing Nicky had going on, like Christmas once you turned old enough to be embarrassed by your parents. 

“You do celebrate Christmas, though, do you?” 

Last Christmas they spent on the other side of the world, stuck in a hurricane, trying to save whoever they could, and by the time Nile had realized the date, they were on their way to end a drug lord. But she didn’t want to miss it forever. She wasn’t at the point yet where she could just move her faith around her life and not miss what she would never have again.

Nicky raises his arm in invitation for her as he turns back towards the main street and their original destination. “We eat together. Christmas in my time was... different. Booker didn’t care much for it and Andy insists that the Saturnalia in Rome were much better anyway. I’m not sure I would even know how to celebrate it as you do.”

She slips under his arm to soften the sting of disappointment and swears that this year she won’t forget, even if it’s just herself. She wants that connection to her family, that memory of knowing they are doing the same as her; going to mass, singing, reading from her mom’s old bible. She’d have to give herself presents but she was a big girl, she could do it. 

They end up in a small art supply store where a middle-aged man listens attentively as Nicky explains what he wants and smiles with gleaming eyes as he realizes that Nicky doesn’t actually have a clue what he’s doing.

Asking for “something new to try for someone who does a lot of pencil and traditional charcoal” is basically a demand to be ripped off and Nile finds herself stepping in before Nicky can agree to buy whole sets of pastel pencils, fine liners, and calligraphy pens. She lets him have the watercolor pens when he mentions how much Joe loves doing watercolor but can’t always carry the supplies.

Still, the shop owner probably makes a days’ worth of money with them after Nicky insists that they also get a supply of proper paper. And a new sketchbook because the old one is three-quarters full.

"Ok, one last question, I swear," Nile says when they step back out into the mild early evening. “Why give big presents for Eid al-Fitr and not birthdays or something?”

Nicky looks up from where he was happily checking out his haul and stares at her as if she just said the sky is green. He leans closer and lowers his voice to keep the words between them. “The closest we have to ‘birthdays’ are our deaths. And we are not going to celebrate what happened in Jerusalem. Joe might because he is a bigger man than I will ever be. He has forgiven, but I can’t.” 

“As for our birth dates? We don’t know them. We don’t have birthdays, Nile.”

She stares at him standing in the middle of the streets, her jaw hanging open because she doesn’t know what to say to that. People are bustling around them and the street lamps are springing to life. Nile is rearranging some fundamental understandings of life. 

Nile wakes the next morning to the smell of food. To honey dripping, Andy summoning sweetness. And sure enough, after Nile returns from a quick shower, she finds Andy already sitting at the table licking her fingers over a plate of baklava. 

There is cake, fresh bread, and cheese, cuts of fruit and little pastries and croissants. Nile wants to ask if Nicky made all of that himself but is cut off when the door opens and Joe strolls in, all heart and smiles, and a happiness that radiates from his eyes outward.

He makes a beeline for Nicky at the kitchen counter and grabs him for a love declaration of a kiss. 

Nile sits across Andy who grins and gives her a _look._ ‘No sex,’ she mouths and no, Nile didn’t want to know that, even if she had her suspicions after some research the night before. The Ramadan fast ends the night before Eid, Lent in the morning. Looking at the two of them and how Joe’s hands sneak under Nicky’s shirt, the desperation in Nicky’s kiss, they haven’t yet had the pleasure. Which she didn’t want to know either.

Next thing she knows Nicky places a cup of coffee in front of her. Joe follows with a soft hand to her shoulder and a small box he sets on her plate. He smiles but doesn’t say anything. So she does. “Eid Mubarak, Joe.” 

His eyes light up from where he was placing a similar box in front of Andy and the words roll from his lips like a soft melody as he answers in kind. She knows she wants to learn it but she settled for Italian first. Blame Michelangelo. If she gives it up to go for Arabic first, she’ll blame no one but Joe and he will laughingly agree. 

As he now laughingly squabbles with Nicky over his present. 

Nile catches Andy’s gaze again and her soft, happy smile at Joe's antiques. It’s as if a dull sheen has been lifted from the shine of his personality. Nile hadn’t known Joe for long enough before Booker to be sure, but seeing Andy’s reaction now, yeah, the dullness had been there. And now it isn’t.

He marches to his seat across from Nicky, picking at the wrapping. 

“Pencils!” he exclaims. “Watercolor pencils?”

He turns the package around to read but Nicky already explains. "You can use them just like pencils, but when you paint over it with the water brush it will spread like watercolors.”

Joe stares at him, absolutely smitten. He already is moving to stand again but Andy is faster. She grabs his tunic and pulls him back into his seat. 

“No! I’m hungry.” 

They eat and they laugh and Nile nibbles the little cookies from her present, sweet with the richness of dates. 

They stroll through the city later, just her and Andy, to give Joe and Nicky some privacy. It’s nice too. 

***

Ukraine is miserable in winter. Maybe it would be less so if they were in Kyiv and not squatting in an abandoned village somewhere in the country’s far east. 

Nile burrows deeper into her heat preserving blanket. They covered the windows with cloth and wood to keep the icy wind out but it still finds ways to crawl in through the cracks and their clothes. They picked the former bedroom as their main quarter. It’s farthest from the front and surrounded by two other rooms, but it doesn’t get warmer than that. 

The good news is: the op was a resounding success. Only their pickup fell through. Copley is organizing a replacement but it won’t be on time. 

It’s Christmas evening. Christmas day in Chicago. Her mom will be cooking now. Her brother will be home from college with that cute girlfriend he’s had for a good year. Mrs. Brown will be over to chat over cookie trays and everything smells amazing. 

Nile wanted to be in Germany three days ago. She wanted to stroll between christmas market stalls, a cup of mulled wine in hand, picking out treats to try next. She wanted to look for a gift. Something cute and dumb, like the lambswool house slippers she’d seen, or the gloves. She wanted to sit in a candle-lit church and listen to the sermon, language barrier be damned.

Outside, Nicky and Joe argue in Italian. Andy chimes in occasionally.

Nile wipes an angry hand over her cheeks before her tears have a chance to freeze. She promised herself Christmas and this looks like a spectacular failure. 

In five minutes she will put on her big girl pants and go see what Nicky and Joe are discussing. Until then? She’ll miss her mom. 

She wipes her cheeks once more when the door is shoved open and Nicky walks in, wrapped in five layers of clothing and a metal tin in his hands. 

“Hey.” He smiles. 

“Hey. How’s watch?” 

“Cold. Andy is the only one who likes this kind of weather, but she grew up here.” 

He crouches in the corner and starts their tiny portable gas stove, setting the tin on top to heat. 

“It explains a few things about her, doesn’t it?” Nile jests. 

They try not to turn on the stove except to heat food. They have two cartridges left and after that, it’s them and the snow. 

“It does, yes.” He laughs a little, doing whatever he is doing there. “But in two days we’ll be home.” 

He pulls things out of his pocket and tosses them into the cup. White powder from his pack and for one second Nile isn’t sure if he isn’t cooking drugs. But then the overwhelming smell of cinnamon wafts through the room. The door opens again and Joe strolls in. He holds something in his hands, something green and torn. Nile wonders and then she doesn't wonder anymore when Nicky sits down next to her, close enough to share body heat and hands her a cup of what smells like hot cocoa. 

Her head swivels to Joe and where the bare wall had been a second before hangs a crooked - _very_ crooked - Christmas tree fashioned out of one of Nicky’s shirts that just so happened to be green. It looks awful. 

This time, Nile can’t wipe away the tears gathering in her eyes, not without letting go of the cup. 

She sniffles and then she laughs softly as Joe sits on her other side and they bracket her with their warmth. He gently taps the cup with one gloved finger and smiles. “Drink. He’s been wrecking his brain for days on how to do it.” 

Nile blinks at Nicky who is studiously ignoring her. He taps on his extra-rugged phone with a pen that is comically small in his gloved hand. 

When she takes a sip it doesn’t exactly taste like she would expect hot chocolate to taste. It’s less sugary, but there is chocolate and little bursts of cinnamon and pepper on her tongue. The heat scalds her lips in the best way and travels down into her stomach, chasing the cold out with a shudder. 

She moans softly. “This is amazing!” 

“It’s been a while,” Nicky says, sitting straighter.

“Since you made this?” She asks. “Because I wouldn’t have known. Thank you.” 

“No.” Nicky clears his throat and sits a little straighter. He casts another glance at Joe, then at her, and begins to read. “In those days Caesar Augustus issued a decree that a census should be taken…”

More tears shoot into her eyes and the last ones haven’t even melted from her lashes yet.

Joe leans close to whisper. “Presents are waiting at home. And a proper dinner. Merry Christmas, Nile.”

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading. I hope you enjoyed it.  
> I am neither Catholic nor Muslim, but I tried my best. 
> 
> Critique and praise welcome in the comments. It feeds my starving writer's soul.


End file.
